Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand
by C.J.Ellison
Summary: [Non-AoU Compliant] Two years after the Battle of New York, Earth is under threat of another celestial attack- and this time its leader won't be trying to lose. With the Avengers unaware and ill-equipped to stop it, an uneasy alliance of the broken and the lost team up to save the world. Weirdly, it actually works. [Part III of Ice and Gold]
1. I: Shadows

_All that is required, for evil to prevail, is that the good do nothing.  
_ Various

* * *

I. _Shadows_

There was something was wrong with her.

It was like a fault in the code. Something was _off_. It was as though it had been redacted from her original design, forced back behind a barrier that she press against but could never quite break through, no matter how much she screamed and pounded and raked her nails against it until she drew blood. She wasn't _herself_ \- and yet she was at the same time, because she knew that something wasn't right.

It was terrifying, how perfectly the remaining pieces felt like they aligned with something in the way that a demigod had looked at her, and dreams that she shouldn't be having.

And yet, after he had rescued her, she was perfectly and unassailably composed- as though, despite being locked in a room designed to hold people infinitely stronger and smarter and more skilled than her, _she_ was in control.

"Let's start off simple. If you could state your full name, for the record?"

 _Astrid North Strange._

"Aliases?"

 _Saffron. Victoria. Astrid Stephenson. The firecracker. Celsius. Fahrenheit._

"Birthdate?"

 _Don't know._

"Country of origin?"

 _The United States of America. But I grew up in England- that's where my schools were, that's where I made friends, that's where I got this accent. He thought it would be safer, be harder to find me, for those who would hunt me down and use me whether I consented or not._

 _Like your agency, for example._

"I'm getting a little déjà-vu here."

"Maybe it's because you're asking the same stupid questions that I'm not going to answer as the last time you kidnapped me," Astrid suggested, staring him down. She had been gazing off to the side - staring through the raised panels of silicon-carbine-vibranium alloy that lined the room, arranged in a honeycomb structure across every inch of the walls and ceiling, broken only by the seams of the door when it opened into the cell- and steadily ignoring the interrogation until that point.

"Okay." Phil Coulson- very not-dead, and very faux-amenable; anyone who thought that he was made of anything less than iron was delusional- replied, lacing his fingers together atop the table between them. Astrid would resent him more, had he not genuinely believed that SHIELD's purpose was protection for those incapable of protecting themselves. For the purity of that conviction, she tolerated him somewhat more readily. "Why did Loki rescue you?"

"I don't know." She answered truthfully.

"Surely you must have some idea. I've seen you work- you tear through lies like they're tissue paper. Even Romanoff's."

Coulson wore the echo of a personable smile, one that was both unassuming and self-assured- but it felt like armour. She didn't blame him; the demigod that was the subject of their discussion had sliced his heart in two.

She would have assured him that Loki had been completely, almost unnervingly sincere in his promise to her that he wouldn't shed blood upon his potential return to Earth, but she doubted how much good it would have done.

"If you are asking me to speculate on the inner workings of his mind, I can't help you," Astrid replied flatly, sinking down in her seat and slouching to one side, crossing her legs beneath the heavy table. "I doubt anybody could. People are complicated to begin with, but I think he actually _enjoys_ being unpredictable."

Coulson gave a half-shrug, expression unchanging. "Still. He must have given you some indication of his motivations during those three days you spent with him."

"That was two years ago."

"Two years and six weeks, actually," he corrected her, mildly.

Astrid ignored this as the immaterial fact that it was. "You can learn everything there is to know about a person in three days, or you can learn absolutely nothing. I think I learned both," she admitted, meeting Coulson's eyes directly. "I don't really understand him any more than you do."

A voice like dark honey murmured through her memory, sinuous as a shadow.

 _You will, in time. You always do._

"And yet- he blew his cover for you." Coulson said in a light, almost amiable tone that suggested that they should be discussing the matter over coffee. She held Coulson's stare, unflinching. "Thor informed us that Loki died in battle, saving his brother's life."

Astrid paused, the information sinking in, catching the inside of her lower lip between her teeth.

"I can believe that," she eventually said quietly.

"That he would reveal himself as alive, to save you?"

"What? No, no, not that," she said impatiently, her gaze snapping up from where it had drifted. "I have no idea where _that_ came from. No, I can believe that he would give his life for Thor's."

"He's tried to kill him on at least three occasions," Coulson pointed out, glossing over his disbelief.

"Yes, and Loki loves his brother with the same intensity as he tries to convince himself that he hates him," Astrid replied, candid and detached. "That's the truth. It's not neat or pretty, but the truth rarely is."

"Believe me, I know."

"Somehow I doubt that," she muttered, turning away and closing her eyes, resisting the urge to rub her temples. Shadows were clinging at the edges of her mind, and all she wanted to do was lie down, curl in on herself, and _sleep_.

The low humming within her brain reminded her of a song she recently been directed to- _Arsonist's Lullaby_. The person who had chosen it for her knew her well, that she would find the title amusing and the song itself oddly soothing- the slow pounding of the beat, like a heart's pulse or resolute footsteps, and gritty thrum of bass strings and rapid piano glissando and muted pain of its chanted lyrics, the harmonies almost a hymn. _I knew love's perfect ache. Some would sing and some would scream. All you have is your fire, and the place you need to reach. Don't you ever tame your demons, but always keep them on a leash._

 _Auguries of Innocence_. _Hallelujah_. And now _Arsonist's Lullaby_. A lullaby, indeed.

Her father had flawless taste in music, but she missed his voice.

Coulson regrouped. "What do you remember about him?"

Astrid sighed wearily, letting her head tip backwards until she was facing the ceiling. "Can't you just look at the surveillance footage?"

"We would, but, the audio somehow got recorded to a different place on the servers. You may have heard that SHIELD has been experiencing some- administration issues."

She didn't bother to attempt to disguise her contempt, letting it surge to the surface, acrid and ugly and hot enough to cut steel. After discovering that HYDRA had been operating within their ranks for decades, SHIELD had rid themselves of the parasite in one of the most efficient ways possible: by killing the host. The agency's many catalogued secrets and operations, still encased in layers of encryption, had been unloaded onto the internet for anyone who felt so inclined to unlock and access, and SHIELD had promptly been branded a terrorist organisation by most of the world.

Astrid strongly suspected that she could blame SHIELD's fall for everything that had happened to her over the last few days.

Or, more accurately, _particularly_ those events.

No matter how subtle they thought the surveillance had been, she damn well _knew_ that they were watching from the moment she left their custody. And as long as they were, she had known that she couldn't risk- it was _that_ part that enraged her. That part, _that_ was infinitely worse than any of what she had endured in the past few days, needles and bruises and knives and all.

Astrid didn't care whether the orders came from HYDRA or SHIELD, whatever the difference was worth. She would never forgive that.

"We're still hunting it down. For now, all we have are visuals."

Astrid could feel a headache forming, deep behind her brows, behind the bone of the upper orbit. "I _told_ them about that at the time- weren't they listening?"

"Priorities," Coulson said in the verbal equivalent of a half-shrug.

"There was something more important than ensuring a trickster demigod who had already escaped a similar cell once before stayed secure until his brother could return him to their own realm." Astrid, addressing the ceiling expressionlessly, reamed off.

"Look, I don't know if you heard, but I was kind of- dead- at the time," Coulson replied, a little tartly. "It wasn't my call. If we could get back to the matter at hand: Loki. How did he act towards you?"

Astrid forced herself to sit up straight, gesturing aimlessly. "I- he was-"

She faltered.

To expect her to translate _Loki_ into something that they could understand and calculate and mitigate for- she was almost certain that the words for him hadn't been invented yet. The phrase _tempest in a teacup_ came to mind, particularly because the idea of frightening intensity trapped in a porcelain exterior, chaos beautifully contained under terrifying cold serenity, appealed to her- except it was less of a hurricane in crockery and more of a galaxy constructed into flesh and bone like marble and dark blood and eyes that shrieked and lips that poured symphonies and cold fingers that tapped full truth before pouring a little out, voice as cool and soothing as a clear night and mind and smile like a keen knife. He was unstable- hateful and vengeful and brimming with malice even as he took pains to protect her from the barbed tarlike blackness roiling in his throat and chest for reasons she wouldn't pretend she understood- sepulchral, and erudite, intelligent and introspective, bright as the moon and so, so very broken, the pieces of him beautiful and twisted.

 _\- th' innocent tattered flower sweet in its bloom beneath the venomous serpent beneath the rotting flower o'er-ripened-_

"Celsius?"

Astrid refocused on Coulson abruptly, eyes hard as she lifted her head up from where it had been resting on her knuckles of her fist, elbow propped on the arm of her chair. She was annoyed to realise that her eyes were brimming with tears, and that Coulson was looking at her with rising concern.

"You know Hershey's?"

"What?"

"Hershey's. The American chocolate brand." She blinked, swiping the wetness away. "It's awful. You take the first bite, and everything seems fine, but then slowly- the taste changes in your mouth and takes on this tang- like bile- literally sickening in your mouth. At first you think that you have to be imagining it, because it tasted fine at first, so you swallow it and take a second bite. And it happens again, but you keep going in the hopes that you're wrong, that it's just you, but- eventually you just have to stop. Yet even then, you know you might go back, convinced that the next bite will taste right."

Coulson observed her carefully. "I like Hershey's."

"I'm not apologising for your bad taste," Astrid said brusquely, an eyebrow twitching up briefly. "My point is that was what it was like with him- at first."

"And later?" He pressed.

She exhaled sharply in frustration, slamming herself back in her seat.

"You _saw_ the footage. He was- _sweet_. Caustic, but- charming. Witty, perceptive- a sense of humour- he made me laugh, talked to me like a person. He was _nice_ to me. I saw Thor's brother," she clarified with a helpless gesticulation. "I saw the person that he so badly wanted to bring home."

Astrid watched Coulson struggle to process the concept.

"You'd be surprised," she answered his unspoken doubts, without any confidence that it registered. As much as she had railed against it at the time, she knew that Loki had been right when he said that no one would believe her- then or now- if she confronted them with the unedited, unabbreviated truth, relayed every detail that Loki had revealed to her in that steel chamber, told them how their villain was made, piece by piece.

If they kept looking for the audio files, they would find it for themselves soon enough.

"So, what did he want from you?"

Astrid sighed. She was so _tired_. It felt like her body was burning the marrow of her bones as auxiliary fuel. She hadn't felt this exhausted since- _before_. Since long hours of flesh and bone and sutures and scalpels, long shifts in blue scrubs and a vibrant white haze of patient alarms and operating rooms.

She missed it.

"Conversation," Astrid said dully. "I think. Mostly."

"Anything else?"

"Nothing."

"You're sure?"

"I know it's not exactly convenient," Astrid bit out, "but it's the truth."

Coulson considered her for a long moment. There was an odd set to his mouth.

"Sounds like he got attached to you."

"That's the logical conclusion. I guess," she said, biting one side of her lower lip again.

He paused- she could almost see the distrust on the surface of his professional mask, like cloudy fingerprints of condensation left upon chilled glass- before closing the slim manila file he had bought in with him. She knew what he was thinking; he may as well have spoken it aloud. Sometimes she wondered at that endless ways that people could lie, and the ways she could pull the truth out of things, when she could bear to without feeling like her mind was about to splinter under the flood of sensory data.

Yet as much as she wanted to correct him, Astrid had neither the time, nor the patience, nor the silver tongue of a demigod to deconstruct whatever scenario they had convinced themselves of and rebuild it with solid truth. The truth being that, she wasn't afraid of being harmed, or of harm befalling others- those who didn't earn it, she added as a mental caveat. She had assumed that Loki's promise had logical limitations, but she was too exhausted to try untangling the question of _why_ the exclusions extended to keeping her safe. But he had made her an oath, and she knew that he would keep it.

It was in how he had uttered her name- like an absolution- no, worse and more confusing than that, like something familiar, even _beloved_ \- _Astra_ \- and what it could mean. _That_ scared her. Astrid wasn't comfortable with not knowing; she wasn't accustomed to it.

She wanted everything to go away, shut up and leave her alone. She wanted _sleep_. More than anything, she wanted to go _home_.

"You'll need to remain in custody for your safety-" Coulson began efficiently on her peripheral awareness.

" _Joy_." She heard herself say. Astrid had known they had no real intention of keeping close watch on her; SHIELD had bigger problems than her, and dealings with Asgard were more the territory of the Avengers, considering that the Crown Prince had chosen to fight beside them in defence of the Earth.

"- but, to be honest, SHIELD isn't equipped to deal with this right now," he continued, unperturbed. Astrid felt a ripple of amusement that he thought he needed to tell her that. Either that, or he was attempting to build a rapport, subconsciously or otherwise. "We've arranged something else. ETA is twenty minutes."

Astrid snapped back into reality, her eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Exactly what _is_ this arrangement? Where am I going?"

* * *

Before SHIELD, before Clint, before STRIKE Team Delta, it would have been literally unthinkable for Natasha to express misgivings about a mission. Unthinkable at first because it was beaten out of her; unthinkable later because she was driven by survival instinct and didn't know any other way to live. Even at SHIELD, it was expected of Black Widow by reputation to be _comfortable with everything_.

And, as a general rule, she was. At least it seemed that way when compared to her partner, who could follow orders in the same breath as questioning the reasoning behind them and formulating another way to fulfil the mission objective. It was why all of their handlers, save Coulson, could barely stand to work with Clint Barton. They never seemed to grasp that he didn't follow orders from anyone unless they allowed him to ask why or attempt to find a workable alternative- that his loyalty was given sparingly because of its unyielding nature- that he wouldn't blindly follow. _Trust for trust_ , in other words. It was a good system, in Natasha's opinion.

It was probably his influence that had caused her to speak when Fury handed her the assignment.

Project Apollo was just one of many highly classified ventures that Fury created and oversaw within SHIELD, one of many secret weapons and contingency tools. It was fairly well known- or at least speculated- that the director had been toying with a design for a highly advanced lie-detector system for a while. Less well known was that Fury had decided that his own experience, as well as that of any espionage agent or psychological researcher at SHIELD, was not enough; he wanted absolute certainty.

For that purpose, the girl had been tracked down. She wasn't particularly notorious or sought-after in her field, but that wasn't what Fury was interested in: it was rumoured that she saw through any lie, but couldn't tell an untruth convincingly if she had a gun to her head- something that SHIELD quickly found to be true, making her the perfect research subject for the parameters of the APOLLO system.

She hadn't come to SHIELD voluntarily. In fact, as Natasha interpreted from the carefully worded report, it was clear that they had neglected to even ask nicely before taking the nuclear option- to keep the project classified, apparently. Natasha could see the logic in that, but also couldn't help but think that things would have gone far smoother if they had just sent her out to have a civil talk with the girl- she could never quite think of her as a mercenary- and lay out her options. Instead they had stormed her safe-house, thrown her in the back of a van and resorted to threatening her with the removal of the thing she apparently valued most- global anonymity- to force her to cooperate. Even then, she had refused to divulge her real name. Clint had begun calling her _firebrand_ mostly because he thought the pun was funny- the worst that anyone could link her to was a little non-fatal arson- and because she disrupted SHIELD upper management at every available opportunity, causing them a few minor headaches. Which Clint also found funny.

Fury had handed her the assignment personally: watch the girl, operate as her handler, and act as a baseline for APOLLO testing parameters.

Natasha told him, in simple terms, that she didn't like it. The director had given her a look- one that was enough to tell her that she had surprised him, not an easy feat- before dryly commenting that her objections were _noted_. They both knew that it didn't mean she wouldn't accept it; refusing the assignment would change nothing.

But it left a bad taste in Natasha's mouth. SHIELD was supposed to be voluntary- that's what made it _different_ , that its people believed in the cause and chose to be a part of it.

Then SHIELD's core turned out to be a shell, and Natasha had to reconsider everything- reconstruct, again, her reality.

Just over nine weeks after Natasha had poured SHIELD's secrets out into the swift-moving currents of the internet, the girl was snatched by a group with interests in acquiring scavenged SHIELD tech and blueprints, selling off anything of worth on the black market. Fury informed Natasha of the development through a secure line, linking her to the live video feed of where the girl was being held, advising her to observe only and record anything the girl let slip- and, although he was in no position to give her orders, as a general rule Nick Fury had good reasons for whatever manipulation or ruthlessness he employed on any given day.

Natasha said the words again anyway: _I'm not comfortable with this_. She had been making the case that she could trace the feed, pinpoint the location and extract the girl with few complications when someone else entered the frame, and sent her carefully formulated argument scattering.

They had been reliably informed that said _someone else_ was lying dead in the wastes of a barren alien world, having taken a sword to the chest to save his brother.

Instead, she watched the demigod calmly slaughter anyone who stood in his path, spiriting the still bleeding girl out of the concrete box where they had been holding her with cool focus and purpose.

Fury told her that she should brief the other Avengers, and said that he would see to the rest. She didn't doubt him; he wouldn't let a known potential threat fester.

Twenty-three hours later, Natasha and Clint were at a secure location- a Stark property, a few hours outside the city- waiting for someone to drop off the girl. She was, by all accounts, perfectly fine, and had been found waiting for them at her last known location in Toronto. The place hastily chosen for their purposes was both the best and worst choice, tactically speaking: two storeys of sprawling oceanfront luxury, surrounded by private land, corded with technology and security systems that outstripped the Pentagon's protocols thrice over, allowing the other Avengers to monitor their status from the Tower. It wasn't demigod-proof, but it was a decent temporary solution while the team gathered their bearings. And, considering the girl's recent ordeals, Natasha had silently agreed with Tony when, as he was offering up the house for use, he had implied that not only would it was a good a place to keep the girl out sight for a while, away from the city, but that the location would be a good place for her to recuperate.

 _It's a great place to get some R and R, which is- useful, you know, in this case. Can't imagine that kid's exactly in the best shape right now, so,_ were his exact words. Tony had afforded them the same tone he used when he was talking about nothing just to hold the attention of the room, or when he was pretending to talk about nothing. _Just be careful of the Hamptonite gossips- I'm pretty sure they bite. The house is nice, though. Good views, close to the beach. Practically glass-walled the place, even the bedrooms._

Beneath the smokescreen of bravado, it was evident that the deceptively ever-observant Stark had noted the girl's discomfort in windowless rooms. Natasha gave him credit for that.

Natasha waited out on the sunshine-soaked decking, the afternoon breeze catching at her, the salt shaving off the surface of sea and relentless rush of the ocean thick in the air; the sliding glass doors behind her were flung open, and she could hear Clint moving around in the kitchen. Reclined on a deck chair, she was halfway through a semi-decent New York Times bestseller when she picked up the distant rushing drone of a light aircraft's engine in the distance. There was a shift in the air a few minutes later, turbines kicking up a miniature hurricane, and she got to her feet.

A light aircraft turned smoothly from its path overhead and descended, landing stabilisers deployed, but it barely touched down. A figure jumped from the mouth of the lowered ramp, landing heavily, a duffel bag and blonde braid swinging over her shoulder. The small jet rose again, drifting upwards, landing gear folding back into the streamlined body before rocketing away, the sun flashing off its dark panels.

Apparently, they still had allies. Or, perhaps more accurately, Maria Hill knew when and where to call in favours.

Natasha came down the steps to meet her, book in one hand, fingers flexing against the paperback cover. Despite assurances, Natasha had decided to reserve judgment on the girl's state until she saw her- she remembered the footage. She had picked deep-tissue bruises out of the grainy feed, counted the gouges scored down her arms, blood spilling from her lip and down her temple, into her eyes. Natasha also suspected a few broken bones or fractures- those would be unpleasant to set and wrap, if no one had bothered to do so, but she and Clint had dealt with worse with less in the past- and the girl was tough. Her strides were stubbornly long as she approached the deck steps, wisps of blonde curling loose from her braid and drifting across her wan face in the wind, like brushstrokes.

"Nat," she said, relief thick in her voice. She halted at the bottom of the steps, shrugging off her heavy bag- Natasha caught the straps, taking it from her easily. There were dark crescents smudged beneath her eyes and the looseness of exhaustion in her limbs, but the girl didn't look too bad, all things considered.

"Hey," Natasha said, a faint smile curving her mouth. "Not exactly the best way to meet again, huh? You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm-" The girl gave a strange short laugh, more like an exhalation, lifting her arms slightly and baring herself indicatively. "I'm fine."

Natasha let her gaze dart down.

 _Too fine_.

Both arms, exposed by the short sleeves of her shirt, should have been wrapped in medical gauze, bandaging where the shackles had bitten and raked, sealing over broken skin where stitches and butterfly bandages and new tissue were holding her together. Yet there were no dressings, and no fresh wounds- not even evidence of healing or scarring.

There wasn't a mark on her- not even a fleck of blood.

 _Like magic_.

With a slight crease between her brows, Natasha met her eyes.

"Did Loki do this?" She had to ask, carefully taking the girl's wrist, her touch cool and light- just in case it was some new medical technology she hadn't come across yet, or an unnerving illusion.

"I think so," the girl replied evenly, head dropping to examine where her flesh had been torn open and apparently knitted back together within a matter of hours. "I woke up like this, afterwards. It doesn't even hurt."

Natasha's mind spun in place in a blur of magic and aliens and things that the skies had spat out that she had compartmentalised and left others to sift through- and the girl who had been caught in the middle.

A sick feeling settled in her stomach, as though she had swallowed a mouthful of gasoline.

Natasha took the girl's hand. The swirl of thoughts drained away, leaving her expression as bare and hard as ceramic.

"He's not going to hurt you," Natasha said firmly, snow and iron behind it.

"I know," she replied calmly.

With a tilt of her head and encouraging tug on her wrist, Natasha led her up the stairs and up to the large porch. She nudged her through the glass doors, and the girl wandered ahead into one of the rooms beyond as Natasha placed her luggage and the book aside.

The interior was modern and minimalistic, open-plan and flooded with natural light, decorated and furnished in a carefully neutral colour scheme of sheer white, silver and pale beige-gold. Truthfully, it lacked something of the Avengers Tower and its smooth slate floors and curved glass partitions, everything streamlined and tailor-made to suit its inhabitants, a hollow carved out for each of them to slip into like a comfortable niche. While each member of the team had an entire floor of the skyscraper to themselves, generously outfitted with every amenity and luxury that Tony could think of- plus the large communal kitchen, bar and living room in what was once the penthouse suite, and several laboratories, gyms and training areas- the house felt infinitely emptier, despite its size. Like any self-respecting Stark property, it wasn't lacking in space, possessing five bedrooms, three of which had an ensuite, but it was at least compact enough to ensure that Natasha and Clint could perform efficient security sweeps.

"Nice place," the girl commented blandly, most likely sensing all of this as soon as she stepped inside. "Stark's?"

"Yep. Comes complete with the usual security systems, all of which runs on a private power grid," Natasha said lightly, leading the way through the solarium towards the kitchen. "There's also a fully stocked bar, pantry, and icebox- big ones, since we're a pretty long drive from the closest convenience store. No noisy neighbours though."

"Ah." She glanced over her shoulder, following Natasha with a smile like a fault line. "I see. That's good."

Neither of them noticed her shadow falling out of sync with her, fluttering like fabric caught in the breeze.

"Hey, firebrand!"

The shadow slid back into place, settling like the feathers of a raven, silent and watchful.

Clint was wearing a grin and a dusting of flour in addition to the distressed t-shirt and board shorts he had donned that morning, whisking a thick, pale gold batter, the mixing bowl held against his ribs by one strong arm. The silver-grey granite countertops were covered in various breakfast foodstuffs, arranged in some nebulous sequential order known only to Clint, bacon and butter, flour and fruit, cereal and cream. There was a stack of clean plates in one corner, a skillet heating on the stovetop, and a mixing station set up on the large island unit at the centre of the kitchen, clear glass bowls and jugs dusted and smeared with the remnants of measured ingredients. Behind him was one of the smaller lounges, the sofas arranged around a low glass coffee table and in front of a large plasma screen mounted on the wall, displaying the paused screen of the latest first-person shooter.

"Great timing. You hungry?"

"I honestly can't tell anymore," the girl admitted, tangling her fingers together behind her back as she circled around and approached the round-edged island counter. "What are you making?"

"I was thinking chocolate chip pancakes."

"Never had them before. Are they good?"

Clint gave a look of almost melodramatic horror, his whisk stilling. " _What_? What the heck do you eat for breakfast on Sundays? Warmed cardboard?"

"Pastries, usually," the girl answered, expressionless.

He placed the bowl of batter on the counter in front of them with a hollow heavy clunk, grabbing a packet of milk chocolate chips and tearing it open, dumping the contents into the bowl. "We're gonna have to fix this. You need to know how good this is."

Natasha rolled her eyes, but there wasn't much real scorn in it. Pancakes were one of the first things that Clint had fed her during those first weeks at SHIELD, after he had brought her in, full of calories and emitting a rich, comforting smell that the elegant empty Stark property could use.

"So, pancakes- and we've got orange juice, blueberry juice, milk, iced coffee, regular coffee, a couple of different types of tea- do you want bacon?"

"I never really liked it."

"Then it wasn't done properly," Clint replied decisively as he ladled a scoop of pancake batter from the bowl, pouring it expertly into the skillet. "I'll stick some on the griddle in a second- you have to try it when it's been done right, even if you don't eat it all. I was thinking eggs, too-"

"I can do those," Natasha offered, despite already knowing the reaction it would provoke.

"Stay out of my kitchen, Tasha," he said briskly, wiping his hands on a dishcloth and tossing it over his shoulder.

Natasha hoisted herself up onto a barstool facing the stove by the heels of her palms, unoffended. "Isn't it technically Tony's kitchen?"

"Like he's ever cooked anything in here," Clint snorted derisively. "It takes him three hours to make an omelette, and that's when he doesn't get distracted trying to tune up the toaster."

"I don't know. His steaks are pretty good."

Clint paused, and grudgingly conceded, "Okay, yeah, the man can grill a mean strip steak."

The girl listened to them talk without comment, watching them through heavy lashes, distant and barely more substantial than a shadow.

Clint served her first by silent agreement. Setting the first stack of piping-hot pancakes in front of her, thick and generously pitted with pockets of melting chocolate, he coaxed her with a gentle hand on her shoulder to just eat whatever she could. Her forkfuls were tentative at first- her stomach having shrunken during her captivity- but her body quickly reacted to being fed, her bites becoming more voracious as her appetite reawakened. Clint efficiently refilled her plate as soon as she had cleaned it, while Natasha encouraged her to take it slow, knowing that she would only end up vomiting otherwise. As it was, Natasha considered it a minor miracle that what Clint loaded onto the girl's plate didn't prove so rich that her stomach rejected it.

Still, the girl ended up consuming two plates of pancakes, one drizzled with maple syrup and the other with melted butter, an extra round of crisp griddled bacon, a shallow bowlful of chocolate and almond muesli drowned in frosty full-fat milk, two tall tumblers of orange juice- and also managed a bowlful of natural yoghurt, oats and chopped strawberries as she went into the attached lounge to watch Clint mow down enemy NPCs.

"You doing any better, firebrand?" Clint asked, thumbs darting over the controls as he took down another enemy unit. "Thought it might help to get some good food inside you."

"Yeah, thank you," the girl said, curling up on the loveseat that was arranged perpendicular to the longer sofa where Clint was seated, directly in front of the screen. "I didn't realise how hungry I was. And you were right about the bacon. Although, I don't think I'll be eating it again unless you've cooked it."

"Please don't say that to his face," Natasha called from the kitchen, wiping down the counters. "You'll give him _ideas_."

"My cooking's awesome, Tasha, she's allowed to appreciate it," Clint threw over his shoulder with a grin, before cursing under his breath as the edges of the screen were spattered with luminous red.

The girl watched Clint wage digital war idly, her head drifting to one side. "You're spoiling me," she pointed out idly, scooping up another mouthful of yoghurt haphazardly, sinking further back into the cushions; Natasha fully expected her to fall asleep within the hour.

"What's your point, kiddo?"

"No _point_ , per se," the girl said through the spoon still stuffed in her mouth, teeth clicking against the stainless steel. "Just- you know, making an observation. So you know that I know. It's good to be on the same page."

Clint smirked, amused by her drowsy ramblings, but Natasha didn't like the knowing double edge of her words.

Despite the constant sprays of loud gunfire and shouted orders thrumming through the surround-sound speakers, the girl was out within thirty-two minutes. She didn't even stir when Natasha eased the empty bowl away from her.

"She's not naïve, Clint," Natasha directed towards her partner softly as he came back downstairs. The large flannel comforter he had retrieved was thrown over his arm and trailing on the hardwood floor, his footsteps deliberately soundless despite the fact that the girl was sleeping like the dead. "She has to know the kind of danger that she's in."

 _So why is she so_ calm _? She's not faking it- she's not capable._

 _It's like she's just- waiting._

"We're going to protect her," he replied firmly, walking back into the lounge and opening up the blanket, carefully tucking it up around the girl, drawing it up over her shoulder- the double-bed breadth of it almost engulfed her. It was a warm day, particularly for so early into summer, but the ground floor could get cold in the evenings without direct sunlight and with the wind-chill coming off the ocean. "She knows that too."

"Our only real defence here is obscurity," she argued, heading into the kitchen and rinsing the bowl in the sink, an odd chill settling across her shoulders like a dusting of shaved ice. "If he finds out where she is, and he comes after her, it's not going to be enough. _We're_ not going to be enough."

Clint moved into the kitchen to join her, leaning back against the counter beside her, close enough that Natasha could feel the furnace-heat rolling off his bared arms, folded across his chest. "I don't like it either," he said quietly, "but this is the best place for her right now. We're dealing with the God of Mischief and Trickery and Chaos and Magic and Lies and _hell_ knows what else. Our best plan is to get creative and hide her in the last place he would look."

In the short but significant pause, both of them wordlessly resolved not to comment on how Clint had come to observe and take note of Loki's tendencies.

"Besides, we both know that the kid would hate being locked up again, even for her own safety," he continued with a slight shrug. "At least this way she has room to breathe, and the calmer she is right now, the better. In the meantime, the others are back at the Tower working on hunting him down, and either we'll be moving her in a few days, or we'll be getting some backup. Personally, I'm hoping for the second option just for a chance to see Hulk smash his pretty face up again."

Natasha exhaled sharply. "I just don't want this blowing up in our faces. Why he would let her go?" She murmured, letting the hot water overflow in the bowl as her hands fell still. "It doesn't make sense."

"Well, like Bruce said- _brain like a bag full of cats_. Maybe it's a weird code of honour, releasing her first then recapturing her fairly, giving her a token chance to escape. Or maybe he just felt like he owed her, and we're wrong in thinking he's coming back for her. Maybe rescuing her was just paying some kind of debt. Like you said, doesn't make sense to rescue her, drop her off in her apartment, wait for us to pick her up then take her again."

It sounded a little too much like wishful thinking, much as Natasha hoped that he was right.

The girl should have never been involved. It was another drop of red in the ledger she needed to balance with black.

Clint glanced over at the sofa where the girl was sound asleep, thoughtful. "You think she'll sleep through 'til the morning?"

"Probably. You're not thinking of waking her up?"

"Nah, of course not. I'll carry her up to her room later. Let the kid rest- she needs it."

Natasha snapped off the tap. "Yeah."

The shadows cast by the sofa fluttered.

Turning fluid, they swooped up, lengthening, sculpting into a familiar profile, slipping across the cushions. Brow creasing, Astrid stirred, shoulder blades flexing as she tensed, brows contracting nails scraping and leaving dark streaks in the suede.

The shadow stilled, and began to retreat- but, making a soft noise of protest at the back of her throat, she reached out, snagging and lacing her fingers with those of the shadow. The tension in her melted, and she sank back into a contented sleep, drawing their interlocked hands into her.

The shadow hesitated, and settled into place, carefully folding the comforter up over her shoulder.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** Clarification: this directly follows a __story posted under the_ Thor _section. You don't necessarily have to have read it to understand this work, and considering that it is 32K words and three chapters (and, uh, does drag), here's a short summary._

 _tl;dr: After the Battle of New York, an 'agent' is sent to monitor Loki until he leaves for Asgard. She bears an uncanny resemblance to someone who was close to Loki, and is supposed to have died centuries ago, but appears human and has no apparent memory of Loki or Asgard. However, she does have the unnatural ability to see through lies, and realises that Loki was being used as a pawn by Thanos against his will. It's implied in the conclusion that she is the Goddess of Fidelity, Astrid, whose birth name is Sigyn._


	2. II: Kairos

II. _Kairos_

No matter the hour, it was likely that there was at least one person awake in Avengers Tower. Natasha and Steve tended to be the earliest risers, awake to see dawn unfurl over the skyline, like watercolour bleeding through raw canvas, training or sketching or lounging in the penthouse. Bruce was often up by six, but there were days when he remained abed until noon, exhausted by the constant tension he held within himself- although, such recovery days were becoming less frequent since he had moved into the Tower, usually only occurring after missions. Tony was, inevitably, up the latest and longest, at his most productive in the small hours with strong coffee within reach, working in his lab from eleven in the evening until four in the morning and emerging from his room at an obscene hour, unless Pepper intervened. Clint was unpredictable; either he could be caught grabbing a bowl of cereal at one in the morning, or found at the breakfast bar pouring one out at noon, hair mussed and voice still crackling with sleep. And then there was JARVIS, a constant, non-intrusive, benevolent presence in the Tower, corded into it like a _genius loci._

Thus the Tower was neither truly nocturnal nor diurnal. In many ways, that suited Thor. Asgardians needed less sleep than mortals, a few Midgardian hours per night being sufficient, and any more than that was an indulgence. Rarely, then, was he the only soul awake, or there was no company to be found.

Still, on many evenings, Thor found himself alone and wandering through the base, venturing up and out to search Earth's skies for the glint of a handful of stars, barely strong enough to be seen through the wash of light cast up by the sleepless city. Thor was ill-accustomed to solitude; he had always been at the centre of any gathering, surrounded by peers and admirers, laughing the loudest and talking the most, recounting tales and plotting new adventures.

So much had changed. He was learning the value of seclusion, moment by quiet moment.

But night had a sheer, shimmering clarity that made Thor both uneasy and acutely aware of why his brother had favoured the hour. Where the dark prince had withdrawn into it, wrapping himself in isolation and shadow, Thor instead cast it off, and went in search of company and light.

He did not wish to be alone with his thoughts this night.

"How goes it?"

Tony's attention barely strayed from the screens as Thor entered the laboratory where he had been working since midday.

"Not bad. Good enough that Bruce was okay with getting some sleep," he answered, erasing a line of code and replacing it, banishing the window as soon as his edits were made, and drawing up another with a focused swirl of his fingertips. "Guy's been up since seven."

Thor knew. His usefulness was limited for the interim, and he had been strung with knotted tension since Natasha had briefed them, hyperaware of all that the others were engaged with. Behind the soundproofed glass walls, the electrical engineer and atomic physicist had been calibrating sensors in facilities across the globe, repurposing them to detect the few recorded radiation signatures associated with magical energy, designing a program that would constantly scour every available camera in the most efficient way possible for their target. Thor had faith in their abilities; mortals were far more ingenious than much of the galaxy gave them credit.

 _They create their own strength_ , a thought sounded within Thor's head pensively, sounding entirely too much like his brother. _Fascinating, is it not?_

Thor paused, noticing crescents of smudged bruise-purple under his comrade's eyes as he worked, more apparent under the artificial lighting.

"Should you not also rest, my friend? I know this is the time during which you prefer to work, but it is becoming late, and-"

"Eh, that's what caffeine's for." Tony brushed off his concern, bright brown irises sparking across the slim monitors arranged around him, dark and real as motor oil and metal shavings and fresh coffee against the blank-slate ivory and silver of the room. "And this needs all the fine-tuning it can get." He shrugged. "It's not like the big guy can just knock back a double espresso, what with risking going green if his pulse gets too high."

"Then, at least allow me to bring you sustenance," Thor insisted, moving towards the coffee machine set at the far end of the room. It had been the first appliance that he had learned to operate, having established that it was considered the most vital to general peace and sanity. He had also learned their regular orders, considering- as Tony put it- he was one of the few in the Tower who could function properly before receiving a morning sacrifice in a mug. Natasha only drank decaffeinated cappuccinos, if that; Steve took his strong and black; Tony either requested something with at least five different extra ingredients and provisos, or black coffee, strong as jet-fuel and with two sugars; Clint took his with plenty of heavy cream; and Bruce drank decaffeinated lattes- or, like Natasha, kept to decaffeinated tea.

Tony glanced over his shoulder at him, the path of his gaze piercing. "Sure, thanks," he said lightly. "So how are you doing? Not great, I expect- it's kind of a bad question- but, had to ask."

Thor busied himself with opening up the coffee machine, the natural strength of him consciously tethered. It ached, sometimes, like being chained, bound in the same position for too long.

"You need not worry, son of Howard. I am- I admit, conflicted. But not hesitant."

"You're not responsible, you know." Tony stated, misleadingly casual. "There comes a point where you have to stop blaming yourself for other people's choices. That way lies madness. I know a little bit about it."

Thor paused, his shoulders sinking and swallowing thickly.

"Should I be glad that my brother lives- even after all that he has done- or enraged that he deceived me once more without hesitation, and I was blind to it?"

"You're allowed to be both. They're not mutually exclusive."

"But had I known," he replied, voice rough with rising distress as he snapped the coffee maker on to brew, "had I realised his trickery-"

Thor straightened, pushing himself upright on the heels of his hands, vibrating with a futile, barely constrained agitation, muscles twitching restlessly. There was nothing he could do- no way in which he could help- not until he found his very much alive brother and put a stop to whatever treachery he had devised.

"What about this young woman? The girl that Romanoff and Barton are protecting?"

"Celsius," Tony answered offhandedly, skimming through something on one of the translucent monitors with a faint frown. "Or at least that's what we call her- it's her codename, I guess you could say."

"How is she? She was held captive, was she not?"

"Yeah, she's fine. Little bit too fine, actually- apparently there wasn't a scratch on her." Tony swivelled on his heels to look at Thor. "That something Loki could do?"

Thor frowned. "Yes, certainly. But why would he? In fact, why would he rescue this young woman at all, and reveal himself as alive in the process? I cannot imagine he would do so unless he had some use for her."

"Might not be too far off there."

Catching Thor's slightly perplexed look from across the room, Tony elaborated.

"Well- long story short, back then SHIELD was using her as a- I guess you could say _consultant_ , but it wasn't exactly her idea, if you catch my drift. Saw her in action a couple of times. Can always tell when someone was lying to her, no matter how good they are. Any educated guess says that's why SHIELD wanted her. Probably also why they sent her to watch him; they must have figured she'd be the hardest to trick, so she'd be the best person to guard him."

Thor's brow furrowed again slightly.

 _Odd. Why did that sound- almost-_

"SHIELD sent a mortal to- you say she can always tell when she is being lied to?"

"Yeah. She's basically a human polygraph, except, you know, better."

 _\- familiar?_

"And- that is how Loki-"

"Yeah. Apparently, he got attached. Now the kid's potentially got a megalomaniacal demigod as a stalker, and there's no guaranteeing her safety until we find him."

Thor straightened. "Then should I not be-"

"Too conspicuous," Tony cut him off, not unkindly, anticipating what the question would have been; it had been an earlier point of contention within the team. Both Clint and Thor had argued that if Loki came back for the girl, it may be their best chance to recapture him. Natasha had argued that discretion was the point of taking her to the Hamptons, Steve had refused a scenario which turned the girl into bait unnecessarily and without her consent, and Tony had been confident that the defences should be enough for it to act as a short-term solution until they found something better. Bruce had remained neutral, deferring to Steve as the _de facto_ strategist of the Avengers, and thus the majority won out. "The whole point of sending her down there was to hide her. You not being at the Tower would throw up about eleven different red flags if Reindeer Games found out."

Thor reluctantly accepted that Tony's logic was unassailable. He was right in his assessment of Loki- Thor remembered, with a dull ache, how easily his brother had hunted, located and quietly collected items and individuals and information of interest, only ever smirking when asked how he had found what was supposedly the very definition of _elusive_ , or _well concealed_. Thor had never pressed the point, simply eager to use whatever Loki had uncovered, vaguely aware and blithely accommodating of his brother's secretive nature. Loki enjoyed knowing things other people didn't; it was, in retrospect, what had made him an exceptional diplomat and spymaster for Asgard. If ever their band encountered an obstacle that needed to be persuaded to move rather than forced, it was the Silvertongue Prince who could convince the problem evaporate without bloodshed, and just as often swindle some gain from the inconvenience.

The click of the coffee machine tugged him out of his musings, and Thor hastily slipped a tall glass mug underneath the dispenser as it began to pour: first frothed milk, flavoured with vanilla syrup, then espresso, its deep rich brown bleeding through white, then a drizzle of thick dark-gold caramel. Thor had tried this particular variation of coffee in the past- a _caramel macchiato_ , so it was named- and found it startlingly sweet, yet powerfully bitter underneath.

Again, that sounded a little familiar. Dark gold, warm brown, silky white, sweetness and strength.

Thor carried the brimming glass cup across the room carefully, offering to Tony, who took it with a quietly uttered thanks.

"My friend." Tony gave a muffled noise of acknowledgement, already taking a scalding draught of coffee. "This young woman, Celsius- do you happen to have a picture of her?"

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "Probably, somewhere. Why do you ask?"

"I have what you may call a _gut feeling_ ," Thor said grimly. "A suspicion- one I hope is mistaken. But it demands investigation."

Setting the cup aside, Tony gave a slight shrug. "Alright," he said briskly, drawing up a search window and entering a stream of parameters, transferring it to another larger screen behind him, pressing the other tabs to periphery. "JARVIS- got her file somewhere?"

" _I do have a number of SHIELD personnel and asset files, sir,_ " JARVIS intoned, smooth and serene yet with a hint of warmth that, Thor could not help but think, would not have existed had Anthony Stark not been his creator. " _One moment, please; I believe I have identified the file in question, but it requires decrypting._ "

"Sure." Tony leaned back against the counter, arms folded over the distressed band t-shirt he wore, the steady blue light of the arc reactor set in the centre of his chest glowing, sharp and steady, from beneath the charcoal cotton. Thor would be lying if he claimed that he was not a little intrigued by it, both by its ingenuity- and that of the doctor who had originally designed the method of keeping the shrapnel out of Tony's heart- and the aesthetic of it, rising from flesh and bone in a perfect circle of unyielding metal.

"So. Gut feeling?"

Thor glanced his way, troubled, and said nothing. Tony, for once, did not probe further.

" _The file is decrypted, sir,_ " JARVIS announced. _"SHIELD asset file: Fahrenheit, Celsius. Legal name: unknown. Is that the correct file?_ "

"Yup. Pull up her profile image on the central monitor, will you, buddy?"

" _Of course, sir._ "

The digital photograph loaded, semi-translucent on the clear screen, the search window expanding to accommodate its dimensions.

The corners of his vision blackened and blurred, and Thor felt sick.

It wasn't- but it _was_.

The resemblance was more than striking- it was _disturbing_. The mortal appeared to be in early adulthood- thirteen-hundred years or so for an Asgardian, perhaps two decades for a Midgardian- not quite looking at the camera had captured her image, a tightness in her mouth and between her brows indicating that she sensed the lens upon her. Her complexion was coppery sepia, her hair flaxen and with a natural curl, a few shades paler than Thor's own, pulling loose around her features, lashes and brows strikingly dark by comparison. Irises of clear hazel seemed to just skim past Thor- as though he could have called her name and her eyes would have flicked a degree to the left and to his with surprise and a smile.

Thor swallowed, unblinking as he took the snapshot in. The colours were wrong, too soft and similar and drained of contrast, but the outline of her- her expression- aligned perfectly with memories that Thor had kept long stored away, untouched but pristine, preserved by the crisp sterility of grief.

Thor's stomach turned, and he gripped the countertop behind him unseeingly.

It was impossible. She was _dead_ ; Heimdall had lost sight of her centuries ago.

"Thor? Hey- you alright?"

 _But- Loki._ Loki had no way of knowing that; those few who knew had been silenced by the Allfather's order. No matter that it had become quietly assumed, accepted, after so long, that she was lost to them in one manner or another- Loki would have never accepted it without proof.

It couldn't be truly _her_ , of that Thor was all but certain. One of the Midgardian languages had a word for it- _doppelgänger_ ; _double-goer_ , as Thor understood it through the filer of the All-Tongue. It was used to describe the phenomenon of an unnaturally perfect lookalike of another, akin to the eerie _vardøger_ of old Asgardian tales. And like those tragic heroes of the old tales, his brother had likely deluded himself into thinking- the mortal did look _so_ much like her, it would be very easy to pretend- or perhaps he didn't _care_ \- perhaps he knew it couldn't be, consciously or otherwise, and the likeness was enough, the semblance soothing, and he just wanted something from _before_ -

" _Thor_. Hey, not an expert on Asgardian physiology, but I think you need to breathe. Okay? Take a breath. Easy. Come on, Thor."

Thor dragged himself back to the surface of his own body, retaking control of his limbs and turning stiffly towards the voice, barely able to see through the haze swarming his peripheral vision. Tony's eyes were darting between Thor's, concern rising like a tide.

"Hey. You alright? What is it?" He bent slightly, trying to catch Thor's blank stare. "Jeez. You look like you've seen a ghost."

Thor dragged in a breath, throat burning. It might have been funny, had he not been terrified that a young woman may be in immediate danger because his mentally unhinged, emotionally unstable brother was desperately grasping for something that no longer existed.

"The girl," he managed to husk out. "The girl, she- we need to-"

"She's safe, there are people with her, a couple of world-class assassins, no less-"

"No," Thor said, staring up at the screen again, wavering with a sudden rush of sadness. "You don't understand. It's- she looks like _her_."

Tony paused, startled. " _Her_?"

"He'll come for her. It is no longer a question."

"You're sure?"

Thor nodded, jaw wound tight. The old, supposedly necessary, noble lie- _yet another_ , Thor thought bitterly, _how many more, Father_ \- was crumbling, collapsing in a great cloud of dust and rubble.

He wondered who would be crushed underneath its weight this time.

"We need to get to her," Thor said, low and ominous as thunder in the distance, " _now_."

* * *

 _She is dreaming, of a memory._

 _Between the sleepless city and the pale curve of the moon, the light filtering in through the tall belvedere windows is just enough to see by- her bedroom is at the front of the house, facing the street, the translucent silk drapes drawn across the glass like morning mist. The hallways will be opaque with darkness, but she pushes back the covers and climbs out of bed anyway, padding over to the door with long quick strides, quiet on the rug that covers smooth hardwood. The mouth of the fireplace looms, her large bed and its gossamer baldachin towering against the wall, the chests and chairs and daybed jutting obstacles to navigate. The house isn't cold, despite the weather- it has been snowing that evening, flurries made visible by the streetlamps; when she looked down onto the sidewalk earlier, from the window seat, it was like a dusting of fine icing sugar._

 _She turns the handle, and slips out._

 _She sees him almost immediately. The muted snap of boots is the sound by which she usually tracks him, but he walks almost as quietly as she does when he cares to, silhouette blunted by the heavy folds of his cloak, a striking shadow in the dark. He has his back to her, and she closes the door behind her soundlessly._

" _Daddy?"_

 _He pauses, and gives a soft sigh._

" _Little one," he scolds with no real edge, "you should be asleep."_

" _I couldn't," she says simply, lacing her fingers together behind her back tightly until the heels of her palms press hard to each other. "Where are you going?"_

 _He turns towards her, just slightly. "I'll be back soon," he assures her over his shoulder, frayed by a softness and a bone-deep weariness that he usually keeps firmly bound up. "Go back to bed,_ liebling _. It's nothing for you to worry about."_

 _She wants to tell him she's not worried, because he would be relieved. She wants to pretend that she believes him, that she thinks she has nothing to worry about, because it would comfort him to think that at least he can keep her insulated from the monstrosities, and show her only the wonders._

 _Sometimes she hates being able to see through lies, but it's more often that she hates being a bad liar._

" _Let me come with you," she blurts out. "Please?"_

 _He gives a quiet regretful laugh, before turning to walk towards her, cloak rippling in his wake. "I can't, sweetheart," he says gently, and kneels, taking her face between his hands. She can see him better now, a gleam of light in the sweep of his dark hair and the curvature of his mercury-silver eyes, and decides with gritted teeth to hold onto him with whatever it takes. She is as single-minded as he is, and loves him far, far,_ far _too much to do anything less. "I need you to stay here. Tell Wong where I've gone if I'm not back in an hour."_

" _You've let me go with you before," she says, undeterred by the attempt to divert her._

" _This is different. It's incredibly dangerous. And if something happened to you- well, where would I be then, hm?"_

" _I'll be careful," she insists, and feels him thumbing a stray curl back from her browbone; she lifts her hand to the back of his, fingertips slotting between his knuckles, her other hand clinging to his wrist. She can feel the ridges of the surgical scars on the back of his palm, and wishes- not for the first time- that she could scrub them away. There's strength to enduring pain, she thinks, for the sake of things that matter. Bone will often heal stronger after a break, and scar tissue is tougher than skin, but it takes time and it_ hurts _. "You_ hate _that place. You always come back tense and- and you don't sleep properly for a week. Maybe if I come with you, I can help. I'm not afraid," she persists, forcing the little lie through, voice rising tellingly. "I don't want you to be alone."_

 _He lets out a sharp exhalation that sounds like an attempt at another laugh, and rises slightly to pull her into him, easily enveloping her in a firm hug. She sinks down, pressing her ear against the familiar steady heartbeat, snagging her nails into his tunic._

" _Are you going to do something reckless if I say no?"_

" _Probably." She admits glibly. "I thought of using one of the travelling doors on the second floor to go to the Brazilian rainforest. Wong wouldn't notice until morning. Is that more dangerous than coming with you?"_

 _He huffs, somewhere between annoyed and amused. "You know the answer to that."_

" _Then let me come with you. We'll protect each other, isn't that how it's supposed to be?"_

 _He hesitates, the uneasiness humming through him like an electric current. She waits, prepared to argue, but feels his resolve waver. If she were any other child, he would remain firm. But she's not. She's already part of this hidden world. She's_ from _it._

" _You must stay close," he says, in the low tone he uses when he wants her to understand that whatever he is saying is direly important. "And you must not let go of my hand for any reason, do you understand? No matter what you hear or see."_

" _Okay," she said hastily, muffled against his chest._

" _I want you to promise me."_

" _I promise."_

" _Good girl," he murmurs. "The rules of this dimension- they don't apply there. The laws of physics are- suggestions, at best."_

" _I know."_

" _And it's alright to be scared," he continues, wryly. "Arguably, it would be sensible. But I'll be right there with you. I won't let anything happen to you, no matter what."_

" _And you'll have me," she replies._

 _She can feel him smiling, in that almost tentative but completely tender way, as though he wonders if he deserves this, before he presses a kiss to her temple._

" _Yes I do."_

 _Then, as dreams are wont to go, they are elsewhere._

Elsewhere _is a good word for it. They are walking in the space between spaces, a separate precarious dimension, a netherworld, a place of neither dark nor light; it shifts like smoke and water and fluid paint and music. There are questions and riddles here more than answers, but he knows how to seek out truth, and it comes naturally to her, when she attunes herself to it._

 _She is still holding his hand._

" _You've never been afraid of shadows," he observes._

 _She looks up, and realises that she reaches his shoulder. This is no longer a memory, and only half a dream._

 _She feels a wash of relief- so happy to see him that she could cry, her throat closing up._

 _He smiles, grips her hand tightly, and she feels an echo of_ home _that she has been starved of for three years, the numbness lifting._

" _No. Never." She's too stubborn, much like him._

" _Are you sure you want to make yourself at home there?"_

 _She reaches up and grips his arm with her free hand, leaning against him for support, closing her eyes. Here, he is an opaque ivory blended with clouds of steel-metallic and midnight blues, saltwater and rainfall, limned a shade of tarnished brass-gold that feels like safety and fierce conviction and an oath kept and fulfilled. If she were to look down, she would see that her own astral form is radiant, despite feeling unusually fragile- a clear, unrelenting white in the subtlety of the scape, like sun-flame._

A light in the darkness, _he had said with a faint smirk, that first time, as she had examined herself in wonder._ I am- _completely_ unsurprised.

 _He had good reason. She had always had an affinity for light- second only to the air._

" _Haven't we always lived in the shadows?"_

" _That was selfish of me. Old habits," he adds ruefully._

" _I wouldn't call doing everything you could to protect me_ selfish _," she says, hugging his arm tighter, cheek pressed to his shoulder, feeling a fierce rush of affection. "And walking around in the light was what got me into this in the first place. If I had just-"_

"Don't _. Don't do that. You cannot mistake confinement for safety- or live your life based on hypothetical risks."_

" _Why not? You do," she points out, half-jesting._

" _It's called being prepared."_

" _It's called being_ paranoid _, Daddy," she retorts dryly. "Correctly paranoid most of the time."_

 _He ignores that, and raises a hand to her hair- about as easily deflected as she is._

" _So? What are you going to do?"_

" _He won't hurt me," she feels the inexplicable need to say._

" _That wasn't the question."_

 _She bites her lip._

" _I think he has answers. Ones he's willing to give me. I've been searching for_ so long _\- I risked and gave up so much just to get close- and I'm so tired of_ running _. I don't know, wouldn't it mean nothing if I didn't-?"_

 _He gives a short humourless laugh. "It's like one of your favourite fairytales: a stranger appears in desperate times, and offers something impossible, something miraculous, for a seemingly low price."_

" _You know, the way you told those stories, I used to wonder if you were speculating about where I might have come from," she teases, "instead of warning me about demons crossing dimensions to eat my soul."_

 _His laughter, this time, is warm, combing a curl behind her ear and smudging a thumb across her cheekbone affectionately._

" _As if I had to warn you. You sent them scuttling back to their own realm every time."_

 _She grins faintly, recalling that he didn't view it with such nonchalance at the time- not that she blames him._

 _She closes her eyes against his shoulder._

" _What do you think should I do?"_

 _He exhales soundlessly._

" _You can't run from this."_

" _I know."_

" _And you're not going to. That's not the daughter I raised."_

" _No."_

 _She can't. She can't let herself, not after all that she risked and lost. She has raised hell in the past- literally- to achieve her goals. She will see this through, and they both know it._

 _He pauses, and presses a sound kiss to her crown. "When all is said and done… we all trust our instincts."_

 _A smile sketches across her face._

" _Even us?"_

 _When he speaks, she can hear everything she has ever needed to know from him._

" _Yes, daughter mine. Even us."_

Astrid opened her eyes.

The darkness was sheer; there were few lights on the isolated stretch of coast, only whatever faint glimmer was reflected off the ocean and slice of beach, and the distant jewel-bright sparkle of streetlamps from the more densely populated areas of Long Island. Hers was an eastern-facing room, the oceanfront wall all but engulfed by glass, soaking in the sunrise each morning as it opened up across the horizon, the border between sea and sky so sharp and clean that it might have been cut with a knife and a straight-rule. After sundown, the bedroom was devoid of any trickle of light that didn't come from within the house itself- it was like being blindfolded.

Rising on her elbow, Astrid felt an odd awareness running through her, leaving her tense and alert. She had woken up like this before, some fine-tuned sense tripped.

Reaching over to the bedside table, she snapped on the closest lamp.

Nothing happened.

Astrid sat up and flipped the switch several times, to no avail. Puzzled, she paused, extending her senses with a slow corkscrew-twist of pain behind her temples- nothing was wrong with the wiring, the bulb was screwed in firmly, the filament was barely corroded from use. She strained back to check the cable and socket. Everything was in place.

Pushing the covers back, she rose with a shiver, carefully navigating the room and searching for the main light switch by touch, fingers flat against the wall and rasping along the paint, until she found a brass panel and a row of dimmers. Turning them up as high as they went, she pressed down.

The room remained as black as pitch.

Astrid stilled, her breath shivering in the quiet, braced on the balls of her feet, every filament of muscle pulling taut.

Natasha had mentioned that the house ran on its own exclusive power supply, off the national grid. Stark technology was unparalleled in its calibre, no matter what Dr Reed Richard's financial backers and buyers claimed, but the Hampton house wasn't one of Tony's preferred houses- it was unlikely that he had updated its security systems recently, or added anything to prevent tampering with the power supply and auxiliary generator.

She remained motionless with steady static tension, as though there was a cord rooted at the base of her spine, running along the fuller of her back and yanking firm between her scapulae. It would take something exceptional to disable something of Stark's design, not to mention cut the power without Natasha or Clint detecting that something was amiss- she knew they took shifts on watch, as a precaution. Or- she had it backwards. Something had- incapacitated them- or else she would have woken up to one of them bursting into her room and dragging her out of bed by the arm, keeping her shielded behind them and a weapon drawn.

Astrid breathed out, lowering herself onto her heels, hand sliding from the wall.

Slowly, she moved towards the door.

The moon had risen early that evening, waxing into a perfect disc of radiant white. Its sheer luminosity cast a wash of light, pale as bare bone, through the panoramic windows facing the external wall, glancing off surfaces and altering the shadows. Astrid stepped out cautiously, glancing up and down the length of the hallway as she pulled the door shut behind her with a loud _click_.

The quiet resettled, embroidered by the seething hiss of the ocean beyond insulated walls.

The hallway was as still as a sealed tomb.

Astrid supressed a shudder, and summoned her voice.

"Loki?"

" _Yes_."

She spun sharply and almost smacked her arm off the door handle as she turned, heart hammering wildly against her breastbone, breath skittering out.

 _Should have been expecting that._

It would have been impossible not to recognise him. The jolt that ran through her was like the first electrifying hit of a narcotic, synapses firing off like livewires, frighteningly potent and near disorientating.

He had appeared as though from nothingness- _definitely not there before_ \- a construction of darkness, rendered faceless and featureless by the angle at which he stood. With a flick of her eyes, Astrid measured the slope of his shoulders, the slant of his head as he regarded her, the faint contour of his cheekbone and temple, the brittle tension and semi-conscious command in the way he stood- and the careful distance placed between them. It could be eradicated with nothing more than a few strides, but felt as impassable as a barrier of crystallised light.

She pressed her knuckles to her chest to calm her thundering pulse, exhaling.

"Natasha and Clint."

"Placed under a curse of slumber that will wear off once dawn light crosses their skin."

His reply was swift and smooth, sleek and supple as snakeskin. It made her think of cool hands, slipping up beneath fabric to whisper against bare skin.

"Which will be when?"

"Sunrise, at about five-thirty this morning. They should recover from any lingering side-effects within three hours- give or take."

Astrid accepted this with a nod, wrapping her arms around her midriff. "You kept your promise," she noted quietly.

She saw him incline his head slightly.

"Of course," he replied, soft and almost- unsure. "I gave you my word, did I not?"

Astrid felt her mouth curve slightly, her heart beating strong and steady at the base of her throat.

 _When all is said and done… we all trust our instincts._

"So you did."

It was a long, tremulous moment before either of them spoke again.

"What happens now?" Astrid asked, cleaving to the point.

"That," Loki answered, the echo of a humourless smile lifting his intonation, "depends _entirely_ on you."

She couldn't help but scoff noiselessly.

" _Me_?"

"The choice is yours," he said, every syllable measured. For a flickering moment, Astrid wished that she could see his eyes, almost able to feel the dilation of her pupils, their aperture blown wide and deep to drink in as much light as possible. "I can leave now, and the assassins will never know that I was here- you need never see me again. I can give you time to decide what it is that you want. Or…"

" _Or_?" Astrid prompted, fingers digging into her own flesh bluntly, voice thick with anticipation.

Loki paused, and slowly raised and extended his hand.

"Or I can give you _answers_."

Her breath stuttered behind her sternum.

An offer of _infinity_. He was putting it within her grasp, the missing pieces she had been fruitlessly chasing and clawing after. She was so tired, but it was at last within her reach.

It could have been like breaking the surface for air, except she _couldn't breathe_ , as though her bronchi were coated in tar and were trapping every word that had been waiting at the bottom of her lungs. Her body was paralysed, and terrified of the unknown.

 _There's a word for this,_ Astrid realised with a piercing moment of clarity, every nerve in her body lighting up like an electrical grid.

 _Kairos. Ancient Greek: the perfect delicate moment; opportune._

In the void of her silence, Loki's hand dropped a fraction.

A spike of panic drove up through the floor of her stomach. She stumbled forwards blindly- _move, move,_ move _-!_ Her arm whipping out, she snatched for his fingers, feeling the shift as he inhaled sharply, taken aback. Her nails dug into his skin uncomfortably, her grip awkward, but she held tight, outstretched and straining until a thread of muscle twinged in exertion, elbow locked straight.

" _Please_."

It made her feel almost regretful, for the sake of the Avengers- all those measures, to protect her and keep her out of his reach, and they never stood a chance.

A tremor rippled through her, shoulder joint protesting at the angle- then Loki moved, and suddenly there was cool supple leather pressing against her mouth and arms wrapped around her and the smell of fresh ice and pine and a hint of metal in her every inhalation.

Her tension sloughed away in a rush. Astrid turned as malleable as gold, slotting against him as his fingers moved against the column of her torso, soft as shredded cotton and linen. Her eyes closed and her arms snagged around him, one hand splaying against his shoulder-blade, the heel of her palm set directly behind his heart, pads of her fingertips pressing down.

Astrid gave a soft huff against Loki's shoulder.

"We've done this before."

She felt a slight nod against her temple, and exhaled shakily.

"When? Where? _Why can't I remember?_ "

Loki's arms tightened. The crushing strength behind his grip should have been disquieting, but Astrid was no more alarmed than if his touch had been glancing- or if she had been indestructible.

"You will," he breathed, harsh and painfully tender with promise, as though desperate to soothe a deep hurt. "I _promise_."

Astrid pressed her face into the crook of his neck, hearing his breathing hitch.

" _Thank you._ "

It was a lingering, shivering moment before he replied, his voice slow and coaxing.

"We have to leave, darling. Is there anything here that you need to take with you?"

After a moment of thought, Astrid made a sound of assent.

He drew back, shifting, and suddenly a spark of green light ignited before her eyes. Loki had a small stone pressed to his lips, glowing the pale ghostlike green of fluorite, fractured by the subtle facets on its surface and streaming through his fingers. The shafts of light were more than enough to illuminate them both, stripping away the darkness and rendering their proximity in startling clarity, chasing along soft curves and stark angles and bleaching out colour and shadow.

Taking one of her hands in his, Loki dropped the stone into her palm. Its light immediately shifted in colour as it came into contact with her skin, changing from pallid jade green into blinding white, like a sheet of linen thrown over a bare lightbulb. It was the approximate size, weight and texture of a large glass marble, cut roughly spherical and etched with runes as though by a needle, its surface curiously warm, as though it had been lying in the midday sun for hours.

"The power will be restored soon," Loki warned, closing her fingers around the stone; a shaft of light bisected his features, reducing him to a slice of pale skin and a flash of metal and a spark in the eyes. "I will wait downstairs."

Astrid watched him slip away from her soundlessly, and took a step back, blindly seeking the handle of her bedroom door. Once certain that he was gone, she wrenched the door open and half-threw herself inside, shaking. Falling back against the door, she pressed the heels of her hands into her closed eyes, hard, until phosphenes burst across the darkness behind her lids.

She counted out the seconds, up to twenty.

Then she moved.

Someone had bought her bag upstairs- unzipped, but the luggage inside was untouched. The duffle bag and the clothes stuffed inside was a pitiful summation of an existence, barely two lengths of fabric with any trace of sentimentality attached to them, the rest replaceable from any low-end multinational chain brand. She had left her burner phone and laptop behind, the innards carefully destroyed before SHIELD picked her up. Cheap technology was the least resilient and most easily ruined, she found, even if the only tools available were low-temperature fire and a little concentrated sulphuric acid, and she was determined to deprive them of the last dregs of her privacy.

There was nothing to pack. For a long moment, Astrid knelt next to the bag on the cold floor, numbing and motionless, glowing stone in hand.

Nothingness closed in on her. Since SHIELD, she had been erratic, unfocused, barely holding the parts of herself together with ugly hasty sutures between the exhaustion and the frustration and the doubt and the muffled keening tears soaking into her pillow and the lightheaded nausea and the sickening unease and the slow suffocation of the fear that she had ruined everything good that the universe had ever offered her in pursuit of answers that may not exist, or might just destroy her.

Now there was an abyss ahead.

 _Step into the unknown to get to the unknown._ Astrid raked short nails over the globe of her shoulder absently, raking skin until it burned with the blood underneath. _Seems oddly logical. Better an abyss than another wall._

She stood, the pain in her knees and calves and ankles turning satisfyingly sharp- _good_ , she thought savagely, the edge taken by the gentle haze that came from rising out of meditation- gathered up the straps of the bag, and walked out. As she closed the door behind her, she glanced at the stone still clenched in her left palm.

Speculatively, she unfurled her fist from around it, and blew on its surface, quick and short.

The light snuffed out like the flame at the wick of a candle.

Astrid found him waiting for her, positioned in view of the staircase but at a consciously courteous distance, eerie against the windows, the glass lit by ambient light like blackened television screens. Loki lifted his head as she descended, straightening infinitesimally, restrained and waiting until her feet hit the hardwood floor to speak.

"Where's your light, _h_ _ækkaði_?"

She produced the stone. "Figured I wouldn't need it," she said as she approached with tight hasty strides, dropping it into his awaiting hand. Before she could think of anything else to say to distract herself, Loki swiftly and deftly took the duffel bag from her with one hand and picked up something heavy and folded from the arm of the nearest sofa with the other. She heard the muffled spill of fabric, felt a snap of displaced air, before the comforter was wrapped around her, smothering the shivers that she hadn't even noticed.

"Oh…" Astrid dragged the comforter more securely around her, pulling the trailing ends to rest over the crook of her arms, like a heavy cloak.

"Summer nights can be surprisingly cold," Loki commented. "Although we shouldn't be outside for long."

Astrid considered asking, before quickly deciding that she didn't actually care. Time was short enough. She wanted to leave.

"I'm ready."

Loki's shoulders dropped by an almost unremarkable degree, but Astrid could all but taste the wealth of relief tangled up within it.

She followed him as her led them through the darkened house, and down into the garage. The exterior doors were thrown open, the smell of sea salt and moonlight flooding through on a brisk breeze, the concrete floors freezing. There were several vehicles lined up before them- two were shrouded under dustcovers, the low-slung streamlined contours of luxury sports cars discernible beneath the canvas, three others left uncovered and gleaming: an aggressively bulky Jeep Wrangler, an almost painfully generic silver GM, and a scuffed Yamaha sports motorcycle.

"Which one?"

Astrid turned to find Loki gazing at her, a brow raised expectantly.

"They'll have GPS trackers installed."

"We have time enough," he assured her.

Astrid bit into the swell of her lip, and surveyed the available vehicles, calculating. She could easily ride the Yamaha, but considering her state of dress- or lack thereof- it was probably not the best idea, and a brief painful moment of focus discerned that the tank was only half-full. The GM was the most nondescript car that anyone could have hoped for, but incredibly _obvious_ : it was better to fall somewhere between incongruous and deliberately trying to blend in, like the difference between a pink Cadillac and a black Sedan.

"Much as I want to try out that Lamborghini," she said wistfully, glancing longingly at the canvas-draped sports car, "the Jeep."

Loki inclined his head, producing a set of keys seemingly from nowhere, and pressed the black silicon button. The Jeep unlocked with a dull _snap_ and a double flash of its headlight bulbs.

Biting back a wince as pain drove behind her brows like a blunt knife, brain contracting in protest, pulling on the delicate membrane that kept the tissue anchored to the inner dome of her skull- there was a reason she didn't push herself when the rush of adrenaline wasn't there to wash away the aftermath- Astrid carefully climbed into the front passenger seat, arranging the mass of the comforter around her. Behind her, she heard one of the passenger doors click open, and the scuff of waterproofed canvas and clink of zips as her bag was tossed into the backseat. Moments later, Loki slipped into the driver's seat, and started the car.

Astrid wondered where a young god had learned to drive a manual shift.

They pulled out of the garage smoothly, and Loki flipped on the Jeep's efficient hi-beams, casting what lay immediately before them in an uneasy yellow light; the rest of the road ahead remained impenetrably black, casting the impression of isolation in an unimaginably vast and endless plane. As an afterthought, the useful reflexive jab of guilt reminding her, Astrid strapped on her seatbelt, the slippery serrated nylon resting like a knife's dulled edge against her bared throat.

 _Safety that mimics danger. Ha._

Her vision was still too sharp, her hearing too acute. Astrid sank into the passenger seat, searching for something to hold onto while her senses settled back into themselves, the sensation as though her mind was laced too tight, crushing and trapping her nerves. The dashboard lights were too garish, the air full of faux leather and plastic and traces of motor oil- closing her eyes and breathing into the comforter, Astrid honed in on the constant quiet roll of vulcanised rubber on road, registering every jostle and rumble as they surged onwards.

"Are you alright?"

"I- it's fine. I just," Astrid replied tightly, "it hurts, to- it's been getting worse lately and- I don't know what would happen if I didn't control it, and I can't- I don't-" She felt something wrack through her, and halted for breath. "Sorry. Sorry, give me a moment."

"Don't apologise." Loki said abruptly, and Astrid almost startled as the backs of his fingers- gloriously cool- swept across her temple. The effect was startling, like ice drawing out a fever, calming as fresh rainfall. "It is not your fault. A mortal form was not built to contain you."

"I'm not human." Astrid corrected him, feeling herself leaning into him, measuring out her heartbeat as it slowed, almost able to taste the unmistakable magic woven, intractably, into his bones. She was used to magic that was something akin to the air after a lightning strike- ozone, arcing electricity and visceral heat, pure light made solid and sharp and scorching- but that which ran through Loki was like frost and cold nights under starry skies and ice water in veins, verdant woodland and venom and volcanic earth, the sweep of tongue on flesh and skin between teeth and the line between pain and pleasure. "I don't know what I am, but I know I'm not human."

"No," Loki agreed crisply, his hand returning to the steering wheel, "no, you are not human. But your body- at the moment- is. More or less."

She felt a deep pang, like the wrench of a sob, full and hollow. It was a relief just to feel- anything.

"Am I dangerous?" She forced herself to ask, vacant with disquiet, but unflinching- always, _always_ unflinching.

The car slowed slightly, and Astrid turned to find Loki gazing at her.

"Yes." He replied simply, eyes flitting across her face as though searching for something. "As dangerous as truth. Dangerous as love and loyalty itself."

Astrid inhaled deeply.

"That should not be reassuring," she decided calmly.

For a long moment, Loki stared at her, brows hitched, the car coasting. Then his mouth curved, and he was laughing- uncertain at first, then bold.

It wasn't the same corrosive laugh from before, agony and acidic spite- it was uninhibited, _brimming_ with unbridled happiness, spilling out regardless of consent, bright and refreshing as snowfall. Even under the glare cast by the dashboard lights, it scoured away a hard layer from him as turned his attention back to the road, easing back onto the accelerator.

"You made me wait, darling," he hummed out, almost reproving. "You shouldn't have hidden from me so long, I've missed you _terribly_."

Astrid let up a laugh that caught in the middle, a splash of heat in the cool air, feeling a snap of new energy like the sting of a whip.

"I miss me too," she admitted quietly, head dropping back against her seat. "It's been like a bad dream- waiting to wake when it's over. It made _this_ ," Astrid twisted the pendant around her neck, an anchor in all the best and worst ways possible, "feel that much heavier. I could manage it before, when I was still-"

She halted, swallowing back the words.

"Can you break it?"

Loki tensed, involuntary as a convulsion- Astrid saw his fingers flinch minutely on the steering wheel, watched the muscles in his jaw flutter, a fracture-fine pattern.

"How did you know?" He asked quietly, taut as a garrotte wire.

Astrid ignored the question. It wasn't important, and they both knew it.

"I've wanted to take it off for as long as I can remember. But every time I went to rip it off me- if the seal is keeping me- keeping others _safe_ from whatever I am- I just need to know. That's all. It's why I left," she finished in a liberating, trembling rush, "why I risked everything- I couldn't bear to run away, so I had to run towards. It doesn't _matter_ what I am, just as long as I can control it-"

Something flashed in Loki's eyes, and Astrid realised belatedly that there was an unmistakable plea in her words.

"It was never meant to be like this," he said, soft and low, fixed on the truncated view of the road ahead, the angular lines of him sharpening, shadows shifting around him. It was eerily entrancing. "It was never meant to imprison you this way-"

" _Tell me you can break it_. Tell me you can get it off me."

His lower lip thinned, drawn in between his teeth. "You hate it that much?"

"It's not the magic," she answered, skin pulling thin and taut over the bone of her knuckles, as though primed to split open. The unearthly gold cut into her palm, clogging her throat, skin crawling. "It- reminds me of something that I can't remember, something that makes me feel- sick, and- alone. And it's keeping me from- me."

Loki glanced down, blinking rapidly.

"Forgive me, I didn't know."

Astrid loosened her grip, easing into an ache, and offering a weak shrug.

"Meditation and stubbornness help- _vincit qui patitur._ Besides, it's hardly your fault." She cocked her head at him, resisting the compulsion to gently prod him out of his thoughts. "You should stop punishing yourself and start fixing things. Take more blame than is your due, and it will only weigh you down until you can't move- and at that point you're just wasting oxygen."

The corner of Loki's eyes and mouth thawed through. "Oh, I swear, I have no intention of wallowing in inaction, darling. _There is a reckoning coming_ ," his fingers suddenly slipped into her palm, lifting the chain out of her grasp and letting it fall away. Despite his dark tone, everything about the motion was impossibly gentle, as though he was afraid of breaking her- or, Astrid realised, with the quiet implosive force of a bridge of sand collapsing in on itself, of the exact opposite. "I fully intend to play my part."

Astrid smirked slightly, an echo of _herself_ behind the dead, rotting thing she had inhabited for the past three years.

"Dying is too easy," she agreed, and felt more than heard him give a sound of wry amusement. "Does the enchantment have anything to do with my perception?"

"The opposite, actually," Loki replied, skimming her palm and the inside of her wrist. "You were right to call it a _mystic seal_ : the enchantment restricts your ability. It would be counterproductive to its purpose otherwise- at a glance, you would know exactly who and what you are."

"Every time I push my perception further, I'm fighting against the seal," Astrid murmured, the realisation slotting into place and fusing smoothly, the first piece already making her greedy for more. " _That's_ why. And it was _meant_ to seal my memories-"

She drew up short, hissing through her teeth. The agony in her brain had dulled, but it would still hurt too much to drag the truth out herself- she would have to ask until she got an answer. Said answer could be a lie, the truth, a half-truth, it didn't matter in the least; Astrid would instinctively know which was which and deduce the rest.

"You _can_ break it, then?"

Loki glanced at her, soft and clear as midnight, his hand stilling.

"It will hurt."

" _Ignis aurum probat_ ," she recited, an eyebrow arching confidently, feeling something surge beneath her breastbone- something bright and fierce and defiant that she had desperately missed from herself, burning away the sensation that she was clagged with wet clay, weighing her down.

Astrid settled back in her seat, determined and refocused.

"Where are we going?"

"You're asking a lot of questions."

"For once, I'm getting answers- I'm not about to stop. It's your fault for indulging me," she added shamelessly.

Loki chuckled, threading his fingers through hers; Astrid flexed her hand, opening it up to him. " _Touché_ , darling. I have a destination in mind- if you have no preference."

Something hooked into her stomach, and tugged, an image blooming behind her eyes like a rupture and flooding the world with a spill of colour.

A residential boulevard, lined with slender apple blossoms: pale concrete sidewalks, wrought-iron lampposts, and an impressive brownstone manor- its weathered stone façade almost perfect in symmetry, a great square construction of solidity and safety. She thought of the countless wards and protective spells layered over one another, overlapping and intertwining like a mesh of white-hot wires, cast and repaired over decades by diligent wardens, and embedded deep in every inch of brick and foundation. She thought of dark mahogany and walnut, polished marble and granite, brass light fixtures and geometric stained glass, sweeping staircases and hallways, rose windows and the great circular skylight cresting its teal-slate roof. She thought of a vast chamber dominating the second floor, filled with locked display cases and wall-mounted stands, each object seething with ancient power and sentience. She thought of skipping back and forth between continents through a rotunda of three glass-paned doors, switching destinations with the turn of a brass dial, etchings lighting up with each spin to a new location- rainforest to desert, tundra to ocean, mountain to fen.

The hum of magic beneath her hands, thrumming like a living pulse; the smoothness of plastic piano keys under her fingertips, vibrating like nerves; of leather-bound books and parchment scrolls and handwritten notes, paper stiff with ink, fluttering like breaths- _home_.

The words came out of her mouth without thinking.

"I know a place. Can you get us into Manhattan?"

Loki half-turned his head towards her, before a wry smile twisted its way across his lips.

"Is that _wise_?"

"No. But we both know that it's _clever_ ," Astrid replied archly.

His smile turned wicked in agreement. Loki knew as well as she did that it was the kind of nonsensical that would make the Avengers overlook it as a possibility. "Yes it is. However- is there any chance that SHIELD- or _Earth's Mightiest Heroes_ \- know about wherever it is that you have in mind?"

"I avoided going back for two years to prevent them from ever finding out," she said, sharpening defensively. "I refused to let them have anything that belongs to _Astrid Strange_ \- I wasn't going to lead them to the door of my childhood home."

Loki's brows contracted slightly.

"You said that you grew up in England."

"For the most part," Astrid sidestepped the underlying question reflexively. "I studied all over the UK, switching schools every three months. He thought that it would be safer."

" _He_?"

She hesitated, staring out of her window unseeingly, burning through the knots in her vocal chords.

"My father," she said blankly.

"Your- _father_ ," Loki echoed softly, seeming almost astounded. "You have a _father_?"

"In everything but blood," Astrid clarified unwillingly, resenting the qualification as much as ever. Genetics was an incredible biological formula, the coding of life, and it ran through people in the same way that water was the veins of Earth- but comparing it to love was like comparing paper to steel. Love was soul-deep- or at least the love between her father and herself was- stubborn and proud, just like them. "He- I was-"

The firmly-rooted instinct snagged her backwards, fierce protectiveness over what was hers catching her neck like a noose.

"It never mattered, who- _what_ I was. He didn't even blink. He fought for me, against everyone."

The memory roared to the surface, strong and clear, every detail unnaturally perfect: a windowless room lit by computer monitors and flickers of gold magic, a slab of steel beneath her, drenched with ice water and _so cold, terrified_ \- then eyes and a voice the colour of storm and knowledge, steadying her.

Astrid blinked herself out of the place from which the rest of her life radiated, like light searing into darkness ahead, but never behind.

Loki was still watching the road ahead, but there was something sealed up behind the immaculate façade, opaque and pressing to the surface. Astrid pushed herself upright on her free hand.

"What? What is it?"

Loki's fingers tightened within hers. Astrid found herself captivated by the carved-marble ridges of his knuckles and tendons; there was something lovely in his angles, the hollows of him chiselled out with loving precision.

"Nothing," he assured her, quiet and harsh with a lie, like the ice shards in mountain winds. She watched his expression flicker as he heard it for himself. "Realising how little I know of you."

Astrid blinked. "There's an easy remedy to that," she cajoled.

Loki's head twitched towards her.

"You shouldn't offer-"

"I told you my best kept secret already. Besides, I hate owing a debt," Astrid admitted, "and by my count, this is the second time that you've answered far more of my questions than is fair."

"I hardly _minded_ -"

"Well, neither do I, so ask."

Loki exhaled into an exasperated smile. "Are you fluent in Latin? Or are you just fond of Latin proverbs?"

"Yes." Astrid answered guilelessly. The response shook a laugh loose from him, and Astrid decided to elaborate. "My father hates- really _hates_ Latin. But he has a healthy appreciation for Latin maxims. Reminders, I guess."

" _Vincit qui patitur_. _Victory to the endurant_ ," Loki translated with a musing twist of his mouth. "And _ignis aurum probat_ : _fire tests gold_. Do you truly believe in that?" Astrid glanced at him in askance, finding something sceptical and sarcastic in his glinting smile, like gold in low light. "That adversity is the mentor of greatness?"

Astrid mulled the question over, pulling apart and peeling away its casing in ribbons to expose the hidden implications within, like components of fine clockwork.

"Adversity can- draw out greatness," she said carefully, "sometimes. It's like freshly broken glass- its edge is one of sharpest things in world. But, sometimes pressure does nothing but grind down until it leaves only grit. It doesn't matter, though," Astrid continued, "because that's not the answer you were looking for, since that's not the question you were asking."

She waited for Loki to look at her, his irises and full of strained anticipation, and of her.

"Yes," Astrid said, fluid and unquestionable, "my childhood wasn't painless. Nowhere close. But it was a good pain, for the most part. The kind that _drives_. Forces you to adapt, makes you work and think faster and better because you want it more- like a hunger. It wasn't easy, but I wouldn't have been happy if it was."

"And you _were_ happy?" Loki pressed, his fingers tightening where they were laced with hers.

The smile shone out of her, natural and boundless as the emergence of the sun in the east.

"Yes. I was."

Loki relented, turning his focus back to the road.

"You studied in England-"

" _Mostly_."

"What exactly did you study?"

Astrid sank in her seat, giving an unconvincing breathy scoff. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Of course I would, _elskan min,_ " Loki replied, his tone verging on wounded. "You're a terrible liar."

Her jaw slackened indignantly. "I- that is- _true_ , fine, but-" She drew up short upon spying him attempting to hold back a smirk, and yanked on his hand reproachfully. "Just because I can't lie, doesn't mean that everyone always _believes_ me."

"And what if I promised to?" Loki bargained, smooth as a mouthful of chocolate.

Astrid let her head fall back against the seat, facing the windscreen, exhaling deeply. "I would offer to show you my degree when we get there."

"Hm." Seeming to sense that he would progress no further in that line, Loki redirected his questions. "What made you become a mercenary?"

She sank into the leather, joints loosening wearily, watching the car rattle forward through her lashes.

"I knew it was the best way to get information that I wouldn't have access to otherwise. At first I offered common things- controlled arson, mostly to destroy evidence before the police got to it- and infiltration."

" _Infiltration_?" Loki echoed with a smirk.

"The _thief_ kind," Astrid said exasperatedly, biting down her smile, "not the _spy_ kind, obviously. I was always good at that- getting into places where I wasn't supposed to be and not getting caught. I made friends in low places, teamed up occasionally and was able to get digital keys for duplicating data, wiping servers, whatever. When I realised it bought more expensive information, I started authentication of documents, artefacts, testimony- a black market art dealer wanted me to torch a couple of counterfeits before a police raid, and I realised that they were originals. They had a professional in the field verify it, and I started getting requests, since I was cheaper than the experts, less likely to talk and never wrong. I asked for information and contacts, not money."

"And then SHIELD decided that you were useful to them."

She made a vague, quiet noise of confirmation.

"Why didn't you _run_?" Loki asked, hushed and tentative.

Astrid closed her eyes. "Time," she said simply. "I knew they were coming, but I only had enough to destroy all traces of _Astrid Strange_ , and disconnect her from _Celsius Fahrenheit_. Celsius was disposable. SHIELD could have her, if they wanted."

"So you locked the rest of yourself away."

Suddenly aware of their interlinked hands, now resting in her lap, Astrid glanced at him.

"You know what that's like."

"I do," Loki agreed thinly, "but then, I am incapable of sincerity."

" _Lie_ ," Astrid stated, immediate and reflexive. "And keeping a secret is different from telling a lie. I was always myself- Celsius was me, but, she was- _less_ of me. So I wasn't her." She dug her thumb into the throb behind her eyes socket. "It's complicated."

"She was what remained," he mused thoughtfully, "when you sank below the surface. She was you without the things that made you. She kept you alive while the rest of you couldn't live."

She stared at him for a moment, the air in her lungs seeming to still.

"Y-yes. Just so."

Loki smiled. " _Silvertongue_ ," he reminded her wryly, like the clincher to an age-old joke. "And you shouldn't worry. Years though it may have been, I can already see you, clawing your way back to your surface."

Astrid swallowed. _Truth_ , she thought silently.

Whatever was holding her together seemed to be loosening, like screws, the pieces of her ready to be dismantled and laid out on a sterile table for cleaning and sharpening and replaced in full working order, slotting together as smooth as oil.

She had always known she couldn't do this- whatever _this_ was- forever. Her blood felt thicker with every clench of her heart, the muscles tiring with the effort of forcing it through her arteries; every sense felt duller, like the organic wires of her nerves were corroding and degrading. Her body was breaking down, her mind was drained, and her soul was-

Actually, her soul felt as indestructible as ever, strong and sure as a thread of promise, and it was probably the only reason she was still walking forwards. If only her body and mind were a little more _cooperative_. She could use the help.

"You seem tired."

Astrid smiled humourlessly.

"I'm always tired lately."

He lifted their entwined hands, bringing them so close to his mouth that Astrid thought for a second-

"You can sleep, _älskling_."

The words brushed her skin in a plume of air. Astrid felt confusion gather around her mouth and brows, like thread pulled too tight.

"What does that word mean?"

"Which word?"

" _El-skling_ ," she repeated at him, mimicking the phonetics and audible accents with what she knew to be unusual accuracy; she knew an unusual handful of languages, but recognised nothing of the one that he insisted on sampling from when he addressed her. She suspected that it was a tongue native to Asgard- one that had fallen into disuse or reserve, given how they otherwise appeared fluent in something that emerged in the listener's native tongue. "It sounds- _Nordic_. Scandinavian? And the other ones- the one you called me before- _hai-cah-theh_ \- and just now- _el-scahn-meen_?"

She saw Loki's brow hitch, the only visible shift in his mood, his intonation cool and informative with an edge of latent secret. "They are words that come from a language no longer widely spoken on Asgard, known as Old Asgardian, or Old Æsir. It left its linguistic mark on the places where the gods were seen and worshipped _."_

"That's not an answer," Astrid pointed out, trying to sound more perceptive than petulant.

Given the ghost of a smirk that tugged boyishly at his features, Astrid assumed that she had achieved a strange amalgam of both. "Älskling is a word used in Swedish; elskan min and hækkaði belong to Icelandic, although there is something lost in translation with the latter."

"Still not an answer," she muttered, glaring out of the window.

He chuckled quietly, and disentangled their fingers. Astrid felt the loss keenly, as though everything that had been keeping her awake slipped away.

"Go to sleep."

"Were you keeping me awake with magic?" Astrid asked. She wasn't sure whether she should be offended or vaguely appreciative.

"Restoring a little of your energy reserves- a few hours won't be enough. Now _sleep_ , darling. Before I'm tempted to _make_ you."

"I'm learning Icelandic and Swedish," Astrid decided lowly, sinking down in her seat and letting the lure of sleep drag her further, glowering at the darkness behind her eyelids. "I learned Latin and Greek out of spite, I can learn Icelandic and Swedish."

Loki snickered. "Now that is a story I _must_ hear."

Astrid hummed, focus fading with a curtain of black, and pressed her cheek into the swathes of red fabric engulfing her- wondering why possessed by odd urge to hide her face on the crook of his neck instead.


End file.
